


Dressing the Part

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Episode Related, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-15
Updated: 2006-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When House found about the lie, the last thing Wilson expected was to receive a gift. Takes place immediately after 3x02 Cane and Able.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dressing the Part

If he had stopped to think about it, the last thing Wilson would have expected from House after he found out about the Cortisol was a gift. But that’s precisely what he got the following morning: a box wrapped in sparkling silver paper and tied up in a thick, curling ribbon. House had waited for him at the entrance of the hospital, leaning against the reception desk, and waved it towards him once Wilson got near. He looked like he might burst into a grin, which, for House, was alarming.

“Um,” Wilson said by way of thanks.

“It’s for you,” House explained, as though it wasn’t obvious from the way he held it.

“Is it my birthday?”

“What am I, a calendar? Just take it!”

House sounded far more excited by the present than Wilson felt.

There was no way around it. He had to be a man and accept the consequence of his actions, however sincere his motives for them had been. With the aid of years’ worth of lying, Wilson pulled off a flawless performance of not being at all scared witless as he took the box from House’s outstretched hand.

And there was a _card_. “To my bestest bud,’” he read out loud.

Now he really _was_ scared out of his mind.

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

Surely nothing too awful or dangerous could be contained in something so small and light. Moreover, however angry House might be, he wouldn’t go homicidal. That’d definitely revoke his medical license, and he only put that thing at risk if there was a good reason, like saving someone’s life or winning a bet. And he had to know that if he _did_ kill Wilson, there’d be no one left to buy him lunch.

He stripped the outer layers one by one, carefully, so as to not ruin or tear the material. This was a habit too hard-grained to be done away with for trifling reasons like fear or an impatient House leaning over him. First the ribbon, which he tucked away into his lab coat’s pocket (and there it would stay for weeks—he kept conveniently forgetting to throw it out), then the sparkling silver paper. Inside was a white box.

Inside of that was a plastic black moustache that curled at either end.

“I figured,” House said as Wilson wavered between laughing and shaking his head, “that so long as you were coming up with devious, cunning plans, you might as well look the part. That’s for until you finish growing a real one.”

Wilson had been so anxious over the whole thing that it wasn’t until hours later that he realized that, leaning against the counter along with House, had been a cane.


End file.
